Organic molecules are pervasive in daily life: from natural proteins, to human synthesized fluorescing labels, to organic semiconductors. The interaction of light with such molecules is at the heart of important technological advances in biomolecular detection, fluorescent microscopy, and organic light emitting devices as well as more fundamental studies of cavity quantum electrodynamics and various types of enhanced spectroscopy and sensing. This interaction can be altered or enhanced by placing the organic molecules in a nanostructured cavity where both the lifetime of the resonances and the optical density of states (DOS) can be tailored.
However, there are inherent challenges in incorporating organic molecules in such cavities: first, their dissimilar compositional structure makes it difficult to incorporate them within the high dielectric regions of the cavity where long-lifetime resonances concentrate their electromagnetic energy. Second, micro- and nanostructured cavities typically only have a small portion of their model volumes extending outside their high-dielectric regions, making it challenging to bring external entities precisely to within that volume. Third, it is difficult to pattern organic materials at the nano-scale; indeed, organic patterning processes tend to be incompatible with inorganic processes. These challenges limit experimental realizations of systems of excitons of organic molecules and optical resonances compared to systems of inorganic quantum nano structures.